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He delved into a plastic bag, pulling out a pair of pale blue tracksuit bottoms and a red-checked flannel shirt. Great, I’d walk out of the hospital dressed as fucking Bob the Builder. Can he fix it? No, he fucking can’t. They’d be huge on me, too, but that was what happened when you were a skinny, depressed piece of shit, whose main dietary staple was sertraline. Phil yawned and rubbed his face tiredly. He’d spent the night in the hospital with me—like he always did, and he looked like crap.
“Go home, Phil.”Stay. Please stay.I could be a selfish bugger.
“I will when the doctors have done their rounds. Someone needs to make sure you don’t do a runner beforehand.”
“I’ll at least wait until you’re halfway through your house viewing before I leg it.”
Saying nothing, he helped me slide the hospital gown off over my dressings then expertly directed my arms into the shirt. He had twin toddlers at home—my background swearing couldn’t hold a candle to their bloody incessant screaming when he wrestled them into their sleepsuits. The current Mrs Phil didn’t approve of me very much. I didn’t blame her; I didn’t much approve of myself either.
Phil eyed my scrawny exposed legs and blue boxers warily. “Can you manage the bottom half yourself?”
“Do I get a kiss if I do?”
“No, you don’t, you bloody faggot.”
Winding Phil up was one of my favourite pastimes. Fortunately for him, I was only at half strength. He manoeuvred the tracksuit bottoms over my feet and up to my knees before letting me wriggle them over my hips myself.
“I wish you’d stay in here for a couple of days,” he began. “Or at least until the psych team come to assess you. You’re not thinking straight right now.”
“I’ve never thought straight, mate, you know that.”
We’d played this game before. It never became any easier though, which is why I cracked tired jokes and Phil focused on the practicalities. After helping me on with my socks, and checking I had fresh water and sufficient dosh for a taxi, he’d walk out, back to his normal life. As usual, I felt myself tearing up and pretended to fiddle with the shirt cuffs.
“I’d just be wasting their time, Phil.” I tried to keep my voice steady. “You know that. Go on, I’m all right here. You don’t want to be late.”
It was his cuddle that set me off. The soft bugger. I always managed to hold it together until he did that. Slicing my wrists open never induced the waterworks. The opposite, in fact. Last night’s efforts had been a temporary blessed release. An old-fashioned bloodletting of the evil humours, activating an endorphin-induced natural euphoria.
The ambulance crew had been nice, too. Professionals, who’d talked to me as if I wasn’t a basket-weaving crazy, who acted as if slitting your wrists on a Friday night was a perfectly acceptable way to pass the evening. That making my brief acquaintance had been an absolute pleasure, even if I had bloodied up their shiny clean van. And the healthy slug of morphine administered by my new best friends kept the adrenaline high hanging around a little longer. Thus transforming the trip through A&E into a pleasant hazy blur of harassed doctors and nurses, none quite meeting my eye, wondering if I was one of the unpredictable psychotic nutjobs who’d suddenly pull a knife or make a leap from the fourth-floor window. They needn’t have worried. I was only a common or garden depressive; I couldn’t even spice up my recurrent downers with an occasional bout of mania.
And good old Phil, glued to my side throughout. Dragged from the office or the pub or his wife’s warm bed, he negotiated the whole shameful saga as if there was nowhere else he’d rather be, either. Or, on a mild Friday day night, no one else he’d rather be with, than the wretched bag of bones attempting to bleed out on a park bench behind Sainsbury’s. His tongue had never lost its razor-sharp edge, even if he had started to talk like the posh folk he flogged expensive houses to. He certainly dressed like them. So God help anyone if they even so much as fucking breathed near me in anything other than a calm, professional manner.
All that jazz I could cope with, as if the drama was happening to some other poor sod with screwed-up brain chemicals. Yet now, when the one constant presence in my life tightened his solid arms around my chest, crushing my face so tenderly against his neck that the suffocating scent of stale aftershave risked succeeding where my botched efforts with a Stanley knife had failed, that was when it always started to really fucking hurt.
I slipped out of the ward a little after ten. From prior experience, I’d learnt that announcing an intent to self-discharge generated a flurry of excitement. Well-meaning nurses questioned my wisdom. I was a nutcase—unwise decisions were part of the package. I waited until I detected a commotion in the bay next door, then simply wandered away.
For the best part of the last two years, I’d been shacked up with Darren Eames. On and off, anyhow. We’d met in a professional capacity, a smooth way of saying I’d been a reluctant guest at the local psych hospital and he’d been assigned as my community liaison nurse after they’d foolishly declared me sane enough to be let loose in polite society. I didn’t know the precise rules governing nursing staff fraternising with patients, but I reckon Darren and I broke every single one of them. He swore he’d never made a move on a patient until me. For a long time, I believed him.
Thank God he was out at work when I quietly let myself into the house. My wrists were bloody killing me; I was in no mood for tears and recriminations. After hauling my abused body up the stairs, I rooted through his bathroom cabinet for codeine. An afternoon blacked out on the sofa beckoned.
Darren knew me too well. Gingerly holding both bandaged arms up against my chest and like a man three times my age, I made my way back downstairs to find him waiting for me at the bottom. At some point during the night’s shenanigans, Phil would have texted him and reassured him his presence wasn’t required. Hurt blue eyes assessed me speculatively.
“Let me get you some water for those.” He took the codeine packet from me. “Watch you don’t trip—those trackies are way too big for you.”
Well, duh. Like I hadn’t noticed. Like I cared.
Darren Eames was a catch. I was lucky to have him. I knew this because he reminded me almost daily. And in many ways, I concurred. God knows what he saw in me, although when we got the balance of my meds right, Phil insisted I still had amusement value. Nearly ten years my senior, Darren possessed appealing chunky, sturdy good looks. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, he was an exact replica of every other bloke who’d fucked me. A mental health professional might be so bold to suggest my taste in men stemmed from having never recovered from my first ruggedly handsome, blond almost-lover. One of the many reasons I never attended my psych appointments.
Darren was solicitous, too. Like now, as he helped me onto the sofa, arranged the cushions behind my head and laid my arm at a comfortable angle on the arm rest. His pampering was not unexpected. Out of the bedroom, he handled me with kid gloves, contrasting nicely with the rough, forceful way he threw me around in the bedroom. I had no complaints in the sex department—Darren fucked me like a champ, every chance he got.
Moreover, as a psych nurse, Darren managed my minor downers (our cute euphemism for my major depressive crises) with as much dexterity as anyone else I’d ever met in a professional capacity. He excelled at monitoring my medication compliance, explained, and forgave side effects, and encouraged me to eat a healthy diet. He was blessed with an even temper and an understanding attitude, as befitted a man in his chosen career.
Apart from when I disappeared and slit my wrists without warning, then called a local estate agent for support. My“other half”as Darren nauseatingly referred to himself, didn’t care for that very much. It tended to ruffle his professional feathers.
“Why didn’t you tell me how you were feeling? Why didn’t you call me from the hospital, Matty?”
He spoke in the gentlest manner possible, kneeling on the carpet in front of me and rubbing the only part of my palm not swathed in white bandages. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I detected an undercurrent of annoyance, outweighing his concerned words. Cloudy blue eyes, almost the same fabulous shade as Alex Valentine’s, but not quite, gazed worriedly into mine.
“I should have been there, Matty. It’s my job. You should have called me first. Not Phil.”
